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Fabrial Machine Guns


ZapTerra

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Variation of distance can be achieved by conjoining differently sized gems. If an incredibly large gemstone was paired to a very small gemstone, the large gemstone could be moved back and forth over a small distance very quickly to make the smaller gemstone move out and return at high speeds. This could be used to make guns that don't have to reload, and run on stormlight. By making a device to automatically shake the large gemstone back and forth, a fabrial machine gun could theoretically be made. Are there any issues with this concept? Is it feasible that Rosharans could come to use technology like this?

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Welcome to the Shard :)

 

I don't think they would be able to do machine guns quite yet, insanely efficient crossbow should happen on the other hand.

Also, are you talking about using the gemstone as the munition? It doesn't seems like a good idea the gemstone would break whenever you miss/hit armor, you would probably prefer to use the gemstone to project a bullet or more likely an arrow

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Yes, I was talking about the gemstone being used as ammo. It breaking would be a problem, but the upside would be that simply resetting the large gemstone would have the fabrial fully reloaded. Maybe having the small gem encased inside of a metal "bullet" would solve the issue.

Edited by ZapTerra
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Couldn't you just have the gem(encased in metal to stop it shattering) push out a metal bullet as the central firing mechanism? Tho you'd probably want a rather stupid size difference between the central gem and the gun one and idk how you'd make something that doesn't just rapidly degrade with continuing use.

 

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2 hours ago, Harkain said:

Couldn't you just have the gem(encased in metal to stop it shattering) push out a metal bullet as the central firing mechanism? Tho you'd probably want a rather stupid size difference between the central gem and the gun one and idk how you'd make something that doesn't just rapidly degrade with continuing use.

That's what I was thinking about when I talked about an insanely efficient crossbow

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That would work pretty well, but if the gem itself could be used as ammo without cracking, then there would be no need to keep the weapon loaded with ammunition to use it.

I should also add that rubies are very hard, and have a compressive strength of ~2100 Megapascals.

Edited by ZapTerra
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15 minutes ago, ZapTerra said:

That would work pretty well, but if the gem itself could be used as ammo without cracking, then there would be no need to keep the weapon loaded with ammunition to use it.

I should also add that rubies are very hard, and have a compressive strength of ~2100 Megapascals.

Compressive strength doesn't matter in that case, resilience does (=ability to resist to a choc by deforming quickly) and I cannot find the resilience of a Ruby. Since Rubies are rigid I'd wager it's significantly lower than it's compressive strength

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If you were looking to fling the gems around as weapons, it might make more sense (or at least be more amusing) to put them in the middle of something like a graphene chakra than into something like a crossbow bolt or bullet (also, wouldn’t that bullet actually be a missile if the gem was still inside it propelling it?).

I still think the gems would be highly likely to shatter from impact at those velocities even with some really good shock absorption, but there’d be more space for force dampening than with bullets, and better advantage taken of the ability to redirect momentum (once perfected) without having to turn the tip of a crossbow bolt.

…Or maybe I just think scything through threats is more visually impressive than gunning them down. 

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This is a cool concept, but I think it has one big flaw.  Everytime we see conjoined gemstones, they are all conjoined together.  For example, the First Bridge uses a large number of conjoined gemstones in the fabrial housings to minimize stress on each individual gem.  To change the conjoinment, they have to be switched off and reconjoined to a different set.  We also see this in Kaladin's flight glove.  He has to switch the conjoinment everytime one of the pendulums reaches the bottom.

For a machine gun mechanism to work, you would need something that rapidly shifts the conjoinment to the next round of ammo.  It's possible, I suppose, but have we seen anything that works automatically like that?  Otherwise, it would be more of a shotgun effect, not a rapid fire.

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7 hours ago, Malim said:

This is a cool concept, but I think it has one big flaw.  Everytime we see conjoined gemstones, they are all conjoined together.  For example, the First Bridge uses a large number of conjoined gemstones in the fabrial housings to minimize stress on each individual gem.  To change the conjoinment, they have to be switched off and reconjoined to a different set.  We also see this in Kaladin's flight glove.  He has to switch the conjoinment everytime one of the pendulums reaches the bottom.

For a machine gun mechanism to work, you would need something that rapidly shifts the conjoinment to the next round of ammo.  It's possible, I suppose, but have we seen anything that works automatically like that?  Otherwise, it would be more of a shotgun effect, not a rapid fire.

This is only a problem if you use the gemstone as ammunition, if you instead use it to fling projectiles you only need a set of conjoined gemstones

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Considering that Stormlight is converted into energy for the movement, I don't think oscillation would be efficient use of Stormlight, since you would have to provide power to both accelerate and stop the gem. It's like trying to cause oscillation using electric energy - a gigantic power hog. Using hears and springs would be probably more cost effective.

More effective use of the power would be mirroring Railguns since they are the best IRL examples of transforming raw power source into projectiles. If projectiles are small half the energy would go into stopping the Gem, but it the projectiles are big, most energy would go into the projectile, and residual energy would be enough to stop the gem because of comparatively small size.

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The ammunition will just go back to the loaded position if your reset the large gemstone. As long as you can stop it from cracking, you only need one "bullet .

I hadn't considered Stormlight consumption. Small gems would run out pretty fast.

Edited by ZapTerra
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My understanding of @mathiau's crossbow idea seems to be the best version of this concept. 

Basically, the conjoined gems would serve as a crosbow's string (kinetic energy imparter) and crossbow arms (kinetic energy source). 

Divorcing the conjoined gems from the projectile (just as a crossbow string isn't part of the projectile) just solves so many potential problems.  Off the top of my head:

  1. Less concern about the fragility of the gems if they aren't what's impacting the target.
  2. Projectiles are more expendable without invested gems in them.
  3. Easier to control/engineer a short, repetitive path like a projectile sled, than an unknown projectile trajectory.  

Edit:  I skimmed some of the above comments and just went back to read @Szmit's comment.  By the time I got to #3 in my post, my reference to a "sled" was trying to morph my analogy from a crossbow, to something more like @Szmit's rail gun concept.  Although I think it's easier for people to conceptualize the fabrial serving as a crossbow's string and arms, as most people are familiar with that concept, a rail/sled mechanism would probably be the way to go about this.  

Edited by Serack
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